Georgette de Montenay, Emblemes, ou devises chrestiennes (1567). Édition d’Alison Adams

Abstract

This is a fine edition of a monumental work from the early French emblem canon. It contains an Introduction, notes on the current edition including explanation of some textual choices, a facsimile copy of Georgette de Montenay’s work, an annotated transcription of the facsimile, an extensive bibliography, an index of motifs and main ideas, a table of mottoes, and a table of contents. Alison Adams guides the reader between the book’s constituent parts, as well as through the dense forest of references and allusions found in the original work. Every page of the facsimile indicates the corresponding page in the annotated transcription, and vice versa. The table of mottoes is cross-referenced for both the facsimile and the transcription. Image reproduction quality is high, although the greyscale print will not make it seem that way to anyone accustomed to using Glasgow’s digitized copy online, from which these page reproductions are taken. This is an inevitable aspect of medium, however, rather than a failing of the volume in question. In the transcription, Adams’s explanatory notes on the motto, pictura, and eight-syllable verse subscriptio of each emblem are highly detailed, indicating where elements of an image appeared in other emblem books, what they symbolized there, then what they symbolize in Montenay; the ways the texts of each emblem interplay with the image and how that alters our understanding of the emblem overall; the specifically Protestant reading of motto, image, and verse, with their biblical allusions; and other secondary scholarship discussing the emblem. Montenay’s other poems, a part of this work that generally receives little critical attention, are extensively footnoted. Adams’s Introduction is an excellent account of the genesis of Montenay’s work and its subsequent publishing history. She discusses the dating of the first known edition (the 1567 ‘Copenhagen’ copy), making sense of the 1566 privilege and putting to rest any speculation over what was previously presumed to be a five-year delay between privilege and first edition, between 1566 and 1571. Adams also explores how this first printing alters any presumption of the date of composition of the texts themselves, and shows the implications for interpreting the work, especially when comparing it with contemporaneous events linked to the Wars of Religion. Of interest too are questions concerning how far Montenay was involved in the development of the emblem images, her known and possible travel, her marriage date, and her conversion to Calvinism as they relate to the writing of the verses. Adams elaborates on reprints and later editions, including the multilingual versions printed in Protestant strongholds. Where she excels is in her careful treatment of the data available, making clear what is established fact, what is the most likely scenario given what can be known, and what is currently unknowable. She avoids unfounded speculation that could serve any wished-for historical narrative, and as such provides a template for any scholar faced with historical records that are patchy at best. Adams has given us a model for how to produce a critical edition, accessible for both the new student and the established scholar.